The Picard rank conjecture for the Hurwitz spaces of degree up to five
type: Item
instance of: scholarly article
title: The Picard rank conjecture for the Hurwitz spaces of degree up to five
zbMATH Open document ID: 1325.14044
author: Anand Deopurkar
author: Anand Patel
published in: Algebra \& Number Theory
publication date: 2015-04-14T00:00:00Z
full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1402.1439
review text: After having fixed two positive integers \(g\geq 3\) and \(d\), one can consider the functor of isomorphism classes of smooth, proper and connected complex curves of genus \(g\), admitting a finite morphism of degree \(d\) to \(\mathbb{P}_{\mathbb{C}}^1\), whose branch divisor is supported at \(2g+2d-2\) distinct points. This moduli problem is known to have a coarse moduli space, denoted by \(\mathcal{H}_{d,g}\), which is a normal, \(\mathbb{Q}\)-factorial and irreducible quasi-projective complex variety of dimension \(2g+2d-5\). The Picard rank conjecture predicts that \(\mathrm{Pic}(\mathcal{H}_{d,g})\otimes \mathbb{Q}=0\). One consequence of this conjecture is the expectation that a certain partial compactification \(\widetilde{\mathcal{H}_{d,g}}\) of \(\mathcal{H}_{d,g}\), obtained by allowing nodal, irreducible curves and non simply branches, should have rational Picard group generated by boundary classes. It is known that the boundary classes can be expressed in terms of ``tautological classes''. In particular the expectation is that \(\mathrm{Pic}(\widetilde{\mathcal{H}_{d,g}})\otimes \mathbb{Q}\) is generated by tautological classes. The validity of the conjecture was known before the paper under review for \(d=2,3\) and for large \(d\), namely \(d>2g-2\). In the paper under review the authors prove this conjecture under the assumption that \(3\leq d\leq 5\) (Theorem A). The strategy of the proof consists in first showing that for \(d\geq 3\) (resp. \(d\geq 4\)) there are at least two (resp. at least three) divisorial components supported on \(\widetilde{\mathcal{H}_{d,g}}\setminus\mathcal{H}_{d,g}\) whose classes are linearly independent in \(\mathrm{Pic}( \widetilde{\mathcal{H}_{d,g}})\otimes \mathbb{Q}\) (Proposition 2.15). The most delicate part is then to show that \(\mathrm{rk}(\mathrm{Pic}( \widetilde{\mathcal{H}_{d,g}})\otimes \mathbb{Q})\leq 2\) (resp. \(\leq 3\)) for \(d=3\) (resp. for \(d=4,5\)). In order to produce these upper bounds the authors …
reviewed by: Alberto Bellardini
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 14H10
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 14C22
zbMATH DE Number: 6424751
zbMATH Keywords: Hurwitz space
zbMATH Keywords: Picard group
MaRDI profile type: MaRDI publication profile
OpenAlex ID: W3102931289
Wikidata QID: Q122983174
arXiv ID: 1402.1439
DOI: 10.2140/ANT.2015.9.459
description: scientific article